The arc of history is long, and it bends toward reality becoming an Onion meme from a decade ago.
I was going to tag this as “humour” but decided it was too accurate for that…
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And yet, Truss is far from alone in lacking political audacity, in seeming to prefer the small bureaucratic task of managing public life rather than overhauling it. In this, she’s fairly typical of today’s managerial elites. Also, Truss’s political clarity seemed to improve during the leadership contest. She even became a little more daring in what she said – for instance, by bristling against Net Zero policies. No, this doesn’t prove she’s the leader we need, but it is a reminder that politicians often find themselves, and their cojones, in the heat of battle. Will the pressures of the crisis similarly bring out Truss’s slightly edgier side? We should hope so. September 6th, 2022 | 6 comments - (Comments are closed)
 Honestly, I kind of like The Rings of Power. It’s slow, and the evident fact that there must have been an episode of ethnic cleansing in the Shire at some point between the era of TROP and that of The Hobbit is sad to contemplate. But whether the mind-wiped stranger will turn out to be Gandalf, Sauron, or someone new has caught my interest, and oooooh the fabrics. Trust the elves to develop the Jacquard loom early and then not bother with the rest of their industrial revolution. Oh, and Liz Truss will be the next prime minister. September 5th, 2022 | 50 comments - (Comments are closed)
Mr. Biden forgives half-a-trillion dollars in student debt without the assent of Congress. White House aides collude with tech platforms to silence dissenting voices on Covid. His regulators stretch the law beyond previous understanding to impose more control over the private economy. And that’s before they get the votes to break the Senate filibuster, add new U.S. states, override 50 state voting laws, and pack the Supreme Court. Mr. Biden has become his foe’s polarizing mirror image. It is exactly what he promised as a candidate he wouldn’t do. Wall Street Journal ($), from which I have quoted quite a lot lately. September 5th, 2022 | 13 comments - (Comments are closed)
September 5th, 2022 | 22 comments - (Comments are closed)
Now a partial reverse-ferret is underway. As we struggle to scrape together adequate supplies of gas for the coming winter, as the price of energy rockets to unaffordable heights, suddenly energy security is at the top of the agenda. Today Boris Johnson is using his final speech as UK prime minister to assert the primary importance of energy security. He says the nation needs energy in the future to be ‘cheap, clean, reliable and plentiful’. And he denounces the ‘myopia’ and the ‘short-termism’ that has led the UK to not complete a single new nuclear reactor in 27 years. Johnson’s parting pledge is to build eight new nuclear reactors, at a pace of one per year. Of course, Johnson does not name the obsession with the climate as the chief culprit – nor does he call for a rethink on unreliable renewable energy or Net Zero targets. But it is a striking change in emphasis from a PM who just nine months ago, at COP26 in Glasgow, was channelling his inner Greta, denouncing the evils of the Industrial Revolution as he tried to corral other world leaders into dismantling their energy supplies. September 4th, 2022 | 17 comments - (Comments are closed)
Responding to his cancellation, Gilliam said it was “very sad that a great cultural institution like the Old Vic allowed itself to be intimidated into cancelling our production”. Likening the younger members of staff who lobbied Old Vic bosses to scrap his show to “Neo-Calvinists”, he added: “They are totally closed-minded. [To them] there is only one truth and one way of looking at the world. Well, ‘fuck you!’ is my answer to them.” – as quoted by the Free Speech Union – “Three cheers for Terry Gilliam!” – rave reviews for a musical the Old Vic tried to cancel September 3rd, 2022 | 13 comments - (Comments are closed)
“Setting aside the stunning sexist double standard being applied to the current prime minister of Finland Sanna Marin, forgive me if I don’t think it’s news, or relevant, or important, or even noteworthy that she’s got moves. Look, I don’t believe politicians are any more noble or courageous or quasi divine than the rest of us. What’s more, if I were running a Western European democracy I’d imagine my stress level would be considerably higher than it is now. She’s got the right to burn off some steam, live life, and relax every once in a while. And unlike Dick Cheney’s hobby, no one went to the hospital.” – G. Patrick Lynch, at the Econlog blog. Elon Musk, the cheeky chap, has also weighed in on the issue. September 1st, 2022 | 55 comments - (Comments are closed)
“It was bound to happen. After skating through the summer without rolling blackouts, Californians on Wednesday were told to raise their thermostats to 78 degrees and avoid charging electric vehicles during peak hours as a heat wave grips the state. Good thing new gas-powered cars won’t be banned until 2035.” – Wall Street Journal ($). In my view, the idea of making people rely on electric vehicles (EVs) and then curbing how much power they have, is a design feature, not a bug. Those of a Big Government cast of mind (most politicians) might rather like the idea of fitting “kill switches” into EVs so that a bureaucrat can disable them. By making cars costly and annoying, it also forces people to use public transport. At its root, hatred of the car is hatred of individualism and freedom. It is hatred of autonomy, even the joys of owning and driving a vehicle. All that “car culture” stuff is just so vulgar. Lord (David) Frost, the former UK Cabinet Minister and all-round-good egg, wrote a recent article about how, as a teenager, he bought a Rush album containing the song Red Barchetta, which posits a dystopian future when motor cars are banned. He wrote:
September 1st, 2022 | 28 comments - (Comments are closed)
It would appear that the Ukrainians have begun a major offensive in the Kherson region. So, using my knowledge of the First World War, how do I think it’s going to go? “Using your knowledge of a war that ended a century ago! What is this nonsense, Crozier?” Let me explain. I like history in and of itself but I also believe that it can teach us things. Or, to put it another way, part of an historian’s job is to stick his neck out and use his knowledge of the past to make predictions about the future. So, what predictions am I going to make? I’ll try but first of all I’ll lay down my reasoning (you get marks for that in exams, don’t you?) beginning with the similarities between 1916 and today:
And now the differences:
There is another element to this which is regime existence. This is not about the survival of Putin who seems to be a dead man walking. This is about what sort of Russia is going to emerge from the wreckage. In the First World War, Germany was a monarchy. Now, I’ve never heard anyone say this, but my guess is that just about everyone in the Kaiser’s regime knew that if they didn’t win it was all over. It wasn’t just Willhelm who would get the push but all of them. And, so it proved. Pretty much. That’s a pretty good incentive to keep fighting. Do the Russians have anything similar? They don’t seem to. The reluctance to call up and use troops from Moscow suggests that Putin is very worried about public opinion. Why this might be, I really don’t know. It does, however, suggest that he is fighting this war with one arm tied behind his back. So, prediction time. The big factors to me are the lack of experience and equipment of the Ukrainian army and the fragile morale and incompetence of the Russian army. At some point it really will be a case of “Kick in the door and the whole building will collapse” as someone once said. I just don’t think it is going to happen in August 2022. August 31st, 2022 | 38 comments - (Comments are closed)
This form of cognitive dissonance faces almost the entire population of the country with respect to lockdown. For the actual decision-makers, such as Boris Johnson, Rishi Sunak, Dominic Cummings and Matt Hancock, admitting that lockdown was a mistake would be intolerable because it would mean also admitting to themselves that they made probably the biggest unforced error in peacetime history and are therefore not half as clever as they purport to be. For the hoi polloi, on the other hand, it would mean admitting to themselves that they were gullible and foolish, and in a moment of crisis simply decided to follow the herd – which, again, would hardly be a flattering self-portrait. Holding in one’s mind the notion that lockdown was a mistake is, in other words, irreconcilable with the notion that one went along with it and is an intelligent, thoughtful, rational actor. Nobody wants to experience the psychological consequences of trying to reconcile those notions, and they will therefore continue to avoid doing so. – Dr David McGrogan writing about ‘Why there will never be a reckoning for Lockdown’. August 30th, 2022 | 38 comments - (Comments are closed)
I can think of no easier way to get a cheap cheer than by appealing to the bigotries and credulities of any remaining remainers. How readily they swallowed the conspiracies of dark Russian money; how wide-eyed and trustful they looked to those who fed it to them. Maitlis’ talk of a ‘Tory agent’ within the BBC merely gives a new formulation to that old conspiratorial toxin. It is now a cliché to say remainers think Brexit voters are thick, but it’s one that Maitlis ministers to well when she snarls about the BBC’s ‘both sides journalism’ (AKA impartial) approach to Brexit coverage. The impression being that Brexit was too dangerous an idea to be exposed to working-class minds unshaped by the civilising effects of higher education. Strange how those who say Brexit voters were fooled by ‘lies on a bus’ so readily accepted and repeated the government’s line of ‘follow the science’. August 29th, 2022 | 13 comments - (Comments are closed)
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